Monsters

The year is 1964. Bobby Bailey doesn't realize he is about to fulfill his tragic destiny when he walks into a US Army recruitment office to join up. Close-mouthed, damaged, innocent, trying to forget a past and looking for a future, it turns out that Bailey is the perfect candidate for a secret U.S. government experimental program, an unholy continuation of a genetics program that was discovered in Nazi Germany nearly 20 years earlier in the waning days of World War II. Bailey's only ally and protector, Sergeant McFarland, intervenes, which sets off a chain of cascading events that spin out of everyone's control. As the titular monsters of the title multiply, becoming real and metaphorical, literal and ironic, the story reaches its emotional and moral reckoning.

Monsters is the legendary project Barry Windsor-Smith has been working on for over 35 years. A 380-page tour de force of visual storytelling, Monsters' narrative canvas is both vast and deep: part familial drama, part political thriller, part metaphysical journey, it is an intimate portrait of individuals struggling to reclaim their lives and an epic political odyssey across two generations of American history. Trauma, fate, conscience, and redemption are just a few of the themes that intersect in the most ambitious graphic novel of Windsor-Smith's career.

Monsters is rendered in Windsor-Smith's impeccable pen-and-ink technique, the visual storytelling with its sensitivity to gesture and composition is the most sophisticated of the artist's career. There are passages of heartbreaking tenderness, of excruciating pain, and devastating violence. It is surely one of the most intense graphic novels ever drawn.

Author: Barry Windsor-Smith
Publisher: Fantagraphics Books
Published: 04/27/2021
Pages: 380
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 4.10lbs
Size: 11.60h x 8.20w x 1.40d
ISBN: 9781683964155


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 10/01/2020 pg. 65
Publishers Weekly 10/26/2020
Booklist 01/01/2021 pg. 52
Foreword 02/26/2021

About the Author
Windsor-Smith, Barry: - Barry Windsor-Smith began his career by drawing mainstay Marvel characters such as the X-Men and Daredevil in 1969 in the traditional Marvel style. However, in 1971 he broke from the Marvel formula when he started drawing the Conan series, turning heads with a fresh and controversial stylistic approach and winning numerous industry awards. Part of a young generation of artists that included compatriots Bernie Wrightson, Mike Kaluta, and Jeff Jones, Windsor-Smith proceeded to carve an independent path for himself. In the '90s, he conceived, wrote, and drew three independent series, The Freebooters, Young Gods, and The Paradox-Man. In 1999 and 2001 Fantagraphics published Opus volumes 1 and 2, autobiographical coffee table art books. The critically acclaimed and award winning Monsters (2021) is his most recent work. He currently lives in New York.